Matthew Wrather hosts as he, Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Jon Perich overthink 2009’s Summer Movies through June. (Considering that last week they spent a lot of time talking about art, this probably qualifies as going from the sublime to the ridiculous.) Covering:
- Pre-Season: Watchmen, Fast and Furious, The Hannah Montana Movie
- May: X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Star Trek, Angels & Demons, Terminator Salvation, Night At The Museum 2: Battle of The Smithsonian, Pixar’s Up
- June: Land of the Lost, The Taking of Pelham 123, Year One, Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen
Tell us what you think! Email us or call 20-EAT-LOG-01—that’s (203) 285-6401. If you haven’t yet, take the very short survey! And… spread the overthinking by forwarding this episode to a friend.
My apologies, again, to Denzel Washington.
I’m so excited for the next Potter film! Good thing it was moved to July coz there are a lot of good movies on May! Can’t wait to hit the theaters!
@wrather: You were going to say that Heavy Machinery is your name of your improvisational noise collective, right?
Incidentally, cinematic labiaplasty is the name of MY improvisational noise collective.
“The Fallen” is actually the name of one particular robot. Basically, Robot Devil. Sadly, not the Robot Devil from Futurama.
Unfinished cuts: The _Beauty and the Beast_ DVD has an unfinished cut as a special feature, complete with storyboards, sketches, and such. This is the version that got a standing ovation at Cannes.
Internet “in the know”ing- It’s a lot easier to act like you know everything when you have the veil of anonymity provided by the Internet. I doubt half the people being trolls and jerks online would act like or say the things they do in person. As for democratization, this democratization of technology and communication is covered extensively by Thomas Friedman in _The Lexus and the Olive Tree_.
I have watched _Lexx_ a few times, and wasn’t able to get into it. It seemed like soft porn in every sense: production value, acting, effects, plot, and yes, lots of eroticism that did nothing to advance said “plot” at all.
_Land of the Lost_ is going to be more like the one from the seventies, I believe- or so I gather from what I have seen on the internets (not that I’m following it closely- it pops up every so often). I watched that series as a kid, too.
Federal marshals also are called in when a runaway crosses state lines- since they’re federal, their jurisdiction is the entire country. And I think they’re sometimes sent to collect fugitives that cross national boundaries, too (it’s a marshal that is accompanying Kate on the flight from Australia to L.A. in the pilot of _Lost_, after all).
I read the _American Girl_ series when I was a wee one, but there have been character additions since I stopped, so I can only speak to the originals (I never read the ones the movie was based on): I think they were meant to represent how even an “ordinary” girl can do extraordinary things when surrounded by extraordinary circumstances. Felicity, for example, helps Martha Washington nurse Revolutionary War soldiers back to health during Valley Forge (I think… long time…). In retrospect, I believe they serve as some sort of symbolism for the aspect of the American Dream about pulling yourself up from your bootstraps and rescuing yourself instead of expecting rescuing from others. And they’re also quite patriotic, naturally. Anyway, nowadays there are more modern girls involved (as in they live today), and it has become a total market of clothing and doll accessories and the like- there is even an _American Girl_ magazine or something, I think. But their premise, setting a fictional young girl in real historical settings that get covered extensively in generic history classes, was taken up later by another series, _Dear America_, only this time the format was that of fictional diary; and this lucrative market led Scholastic to create a version of the diary for boys, as well as two other series with “America” in the title somehow AND a series called _Royal Diaries_ with fictionalized accounts by famous royal women when they were girls/preteens.
It’s my understanding that the time travel element in the Star Trek movie is used to tie the new movie to the existing universe. There is a comic that was written to explain this idea.
But, I won’t really know until I read the comic and see the movie.
Jet packs! The Martin Jet Pack that was introduced at Oshkosh this past year. How did you all miss this? It runs on automobile fuel and can be used under ultra-light rules.